Hello r/askhistorians! I am reading Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490 - 1700 by Diarmaid MacCulloch right now and wanted to follow it up with more histories into both the politics and theology of Catholicism and Anglicanism. I am very interested in understanding more of how both medieval catholicism evolved as well as how arguments used in the counterreformation worked; especially ones that aren't directly springing from the Jesuits (although I should do readings on those too). I would be grateful for general histories of both religions as well as any texts that I should read that people think I should know about or are relevant. I'm very open and grateful to all recommendations. Thanks!
I don't have specific recommendations for you, but I do have a few which are at least relevant or close to relevant to your general concerns.
Catholicism and Anglicanism together
I would recommend two for a start: Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars and Mark Kishlansky's A Monarchy Transformed. The former directly challenges the traditional whiggish-Anglican narrative which celebrates the rise of Anglicanism as following on moribund English Catholic institutions. It has something of an axe to grind against this narrative, but I have asked this very forum multiple times whether it remains the standard text, and the answer has always been "basically yes." The latter is a narrative history of the England under the Stuarts which I have found to do justice to the complexity of Anglican religion during that period; it may be redundant in content to MacCulloch, which I haven't read.
I'm not far into it yet, and I already lent my copy so I don't have it on me, but I would also recommend Kerry McCarthy's Byrd, if you're interested in a musicological angle; she is a lucid, engaging writer whose focus in this book is the irascible William Byrd, a English Catholic composer.
Medieval Catholicism generally
As far as the evolution of Medieval Catholicism, I can't recommend Fr. Augustine Thompson's Cities of God more. It provides a snapshot of Northern Italy in the Middle Ages, demonstrating the deep religious institutions in a region which tends to be characterized as the forerunner of modern secular states. I recommend it as a balm against assumptions about what Renaissance Europe was like. It was not, as goes the high school textbook narrative, simply irreligious and cynical. Thompson's Francis of Assisi: A Life is also helpful in a similar way, providing deep insights into the concerns of Francis and of his biographers. You may enjoy its first half more, as it is a biography, but if you really want to dig into the subject of Francis, its second half gets into the sources.
I have a whole lot more in philosophy and theology if that's the angle you'd want to take. In mysticism, Julian of Norwich and the two works by the anonymous "Cloud author" serve as demonstrative that English Catholicism before the English Reformation had meaningful ties to trends in the continent, in their case the "negative" mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius.
Good reading!
I agree with u/moorsonthecoast‘s suggestion of Eamon Duffy ‘s Stripping of the Altars, though it has been criticised (by some ) as tending toward pro-Catholic bias. Still, it is a good piece.
There is a great trend in recent times (since the 1990s) that traditional Reformation scholarship has been challenged by people such as Berndt Hamm, Peter Marshall, Eamon Duffy, Geert Janssen, Andrew Gow, Judith Pollmann, and Sabrina Corbellini. They reorient the traditional ‘THE Reformation’ historiography, and look at the Reformation period as a series of individual reformations that were processes, which overlapped with one another; it is difficult to analyse an individual reformation movement without considering parallel movements - an example being the rise of Reformed Calvinism in France and the Netherlands and their relation to the rise of Presbyterianism in Scotland.
The traditionally Protestant-triumphalist history of ’THE Reformation’ - a single event in this strain of thought, is deemed much more complex and prolonged by the aforementioned scholars.
A major setback in studying this area is the access (or lack, thereof) to academic articles.
It has been argued that the Medieval Church (pre-Reformation Catholic Church) was going through a period of doctrinal convergence - something Berndt Hamm has called a process of ‘Normative Centering’ (Normative Zentrierung) - but not to such a degree that Medieval Catholic doctrine was thoroughly established. It has been said that the Church tolerated, and sometimes promoted, a variance of doctrine and subsequent debate. This normative centering was sped up into what we know as Confessionalisation - the consolidation and confession of a body of doctrine: Tridentine Catholicism; Calvinism; Lutheranism, etc..
The English Reformation is best viewed as a series of reformations that coincide with the reign of the English monarch: Henrician, Edwardian, Marian, Elizabethan, etc.
Anglicanism, as we know it now, was not a foregone conclusion to the issue of what English Protestantism ought to be. A book I have found useful on this is ‘Early Modern England: A Social History, 1550-1760’ by J.A. Sharpe.
I would read books on Catholicism that describe the ‘Catholic Reformation’, a more accurate term to describe the process of reform that Catholicism had been going through prior to the emergence of Protestantism, but which was accelerated by its emergence.
Much, much more can be said.
I will look up the literature I have alluded to and try to make it available to you.